there was a bill introduced by the ranking member of the ways and means committee in the house, sandy levin, that called for this legislation. the speaker was going to bring it up to kill it, but he couldn't kill it and then we moved to plan "b," the debacle of all debacles. it's the mother of all debacles. that was brought up in an effort to send us something. he couldn't even pass it among the republicans it was so absurd, he meaning the speaker, so it's very clear now, mr. president, that the speakers's number one goal is to get elected speaker on january 3rd. the house is not even here. he's told me it will give him two days to get back here, not two days, 48 hours. they don't even have enough of the leadership here to meet to talk about it. they have done it with conference calls. people are spread all over the country because the speaker is basically waiting for january aboutrd. now, the president campaigned on raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year. the bush era tax cuts will expire at the end of this year. obama was elected with a surplus of about 3 million votes.